


Dichotomy

by StarkestMadness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Light Science Fiction Violence, Minor SWTOR player character storyline spoilers, minor language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-07-16 13:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkestMadness/pseuds/StarkestMadness
Summary: (Minor SWTOR player character storyline spoilers)Jedi Knight Alaeyah Dresden was never very good at controlling her fear. Anger, yes; she could deal with that. Hate, she didn't feel at all. Compassion and wisdom came to her naturally.But she's always been afraid. And now it seems her fear might be justified. Visions, dark and foreboding, haunt her dreams. Prophecies of ruin, of a threat to the very Force itself. There's a problem brewing somewhere in the Galaxy, and the Force has chosen Alaeyah to solve it.A Jedi is taught from a young age to let things go, to separate herself from the Galaxy and its problems, and to serve only the Force. This is why they're taken from their families so young. Usually. Things didn't go quite as planned with the Dresdens. And how could they, with two infamous smugglers for parents?The problem is, her family IS the problem.Alaeyah's family can never, ever, just "let things go."





	1. Chapter 1

# Dichotomy

## Star Wars: The Old Republic

## 

### Chapter 1

### 

Alaeyah tugged at the corner of her dark hood, glancing about the clunking freighter. The narrow bench, wedged as it was between two pallets of durasteel cargo crates, was supremely uncomfortable, and the young Jedi once again reminded herself that such a feeling was hardly a concern next to the grand designs of the Force.

If she said it enough, she thought she might actually start to believe it. 

Of course, the real reason for her agitation stemmed not from the hard metal bench, but instead from the prospect of what awaited her when she landed. 

A Jedi was taught from a young age to push aside the lurking tendrils of fear. Fear led to anger, and so on. It was a mantra driven into her head by nearly two decades of training, and she’d repeated the words so often that they’d long ago lost most of their meaning. 

But honestly, Alaeyah was afraid. Disturbing visions haunted her dreams of late, all centered around her reckless parents. Each night brought images of their suffering, of their isolation. They were no stranger to trouble, but their narrow escapes from credit-hounding bounty hunters and irate pirates paled next to the coiling darkness she sensed.

Her mentors would tell her that such concern over her parents was dangerous, a rocky, slippery path down to the Dark Side. They would tell her to let go. To trust in the Force. That’s why Jedi were separated from their parents so young. Usually. 

Something else she could thank her parents for: Her family could never, ever “let things go.”

Thus, suitably, the only person who could likely help now was also the only person whose hatred for Alaeyah’s father was eclipsed only by her hatred for Alaeyah herself. 

A particularly violent tremble from the battered old ship heralded their descent, and Alaeyah attempted one more time to center her thoughts, reaching for the glowing node in her head, the one from which she imagined the Force flowing like a stream. She tapped it with her mind, letting the soothing feeling seep through her limbs. Or, she tried to, anyway. It didn’t get very far. 

She sighed and rose, settling the black cloak over her shoulders. She performed her routine check, touching the hilt of her lightsaber, just to make sure it was still there, focusing on her breathing, trying to time it with each slow pulse of the Living Force. She was a Jedi, she was an outlet for the Force. Her every action served only its will. 

The wall console beeped and whirred at her when she touched it. With a groan of abused hinges and a rush of warm, humid air, the freighter’s cargo ramp squealed open. Jungle cries washed into the hold, along with a slew of rain. Alaeyah tilted her face up into the downpour, listening to the humble thoughts of the creatures below. 

The Force filled her legs, and the young Jedi leapt from the lip of the cargo hold, eyes closed, arms splayed like a Twi’lek dancer. She turned once, neatly, midair. The rain and wind whirled past her face, her cloak billowed like a comet’s tail. 

Her boots splashed down into the mud, and she used one hand to steady herself. A bit of her auburn hair flicked out of the loose tail she’d tied. 

Only then did she open her eyes. She knew, academically, what Dromund Kaas looked like; the Jedi kept records of such things. But holovids and still images were a poor substitute for actually beholding the towering, twisting trees. Vines looped and swirled down their trunks, vibrant flowers dotted the landscape; all of it backlit by the near-constant storm, the roar of primitive beasts. 

Beautiful and savage. Alaeyah could see why the Sith thrived here.

***

“Tell me, Kalet,” Azzullah said, idly toying with a stray computer spike atop her angular desk. “What is the purpose of the Sith?”

The young Twi’lek swallowed. “Strength, Darth Nox.”

“Indeed?” she asked. Her yellow-tinged eyes found him. “And what would the likes of you know of strength?”

“I struck down Rej’ic myself!” Kalet snapped, “I defeated him in single combat.” 

Azzulah’s voice kept its even pitch, having long since shed its Republic drawl in favor of the clipped tones of the most educated of Imperials. “You engaged in a protracted lightsaber battle with a student half your age. And you were wounded.”

The Twi’lek had nothing to say to that, and Azzullah continued. 

“Strength alone is not the core of the Sith. Power, individual freedom. These are the tenets that shape our Order. And all you have demonstrated...”

A tine of violet lightning lashed from the air, striking Kalet in the chest and driving him to his knees with a howl of pain. Azzullah kept it up a moment longer, letting his cry devolve into moans. When the ozone scent faded from the air, the apprentice panted on his hands and knees, faint trails of steam rising from his wet clothes. 

“Is that you are pathetic,” Azzullah finished, setting aside the computer spike. “Now, go. Meditate on what I’ve shown you. Return to me when you feel you’ve made progress, and we’ll...reexamine your thesis.”  


Kalet snarled, clawing his way to his feet. “You’re only a few years older than me, Azzullah.” 

His refusal to use her proper title didn’t escape Azzullah’s notice. Her mouth quirked up at the corner.

“And yet, infinitely more intelligent,” she answered. “Begone.” 

He gathered himself up, all wounded pride and offended dignity. With a slight flourish, he spun, slamming the office door behind him. 

Azzullah grinned. The truth was, Kalet really was strong, a promising candidate for the Order. But she had little patience or time for his antics. Besides, she thought herself quite occupied on the apprentice front, what with Ashara chomping at the bit with her “balance the galaxy” spiel, and Davros challenging everything that moved to duels. 

Let one of the others deal with Kalet. Her fellow Lords seemed to have much more time to sit around and cow apprentices than she did, or cared to find. 

The Sith’s reverie faltered for a moment, interrupted by an odd, insistent sensation. 

Unbidden, a hazy image of the Dromund Kaas jungle blossomed in her thoughts. The Force echoed strangely several kilos out from the Sanctum. It was rather irritating, actually.

Yet somehow...familiar. 

Azzulah’s good humor faded, and an instinctual part of her mind began siphoning power from the pulsing veins lacing her body. The Sith twiddled her fingers in bemused fascination as a cascade of sparks trailed up and down their length.  
How...interesting.

***

“Halt,” called the bored Imperial soldier. His black hemet’s vocabulator filled the word with static. “State your business.”  


 _Here we go,_ Alaeyah thought.

It was time to see how good the contact eyepieces she’d purchased really were. She lifted her head in her best, overblown Sith impression, glaring with yellowed irises at the guard. Behind him, the shielded checkpoint glowed ominously, steam curling from the field each time a raindrop struck it. A few other soldiers milled about, not entirely alert. The possibility of a Republic strike was slim out here. 

“Do you not recognize me?” she snapped. Her Imperial accent wasn’t flawless, but Alaeyah suspected her quary’s wasn’t perfect either. “I do not have time for games.”

Evidently, the young man dealt with Sith on a regular basis. He barely flinched. 

“Yes, my Lord. Of course. But protocol is protocol. We have no reports of anyone currently in the jungle.”

Alaeyah squared her shoulders. Might as well commit.

“I don’t need your authorization to go about my business, soldier,” she growled, widening her eyes. “I am Sith. I go where I please, and I will not be trifled with.”

“My Lord, I apologize for the inconvenience. But there is a war on, you know.”

Aleayah had to give him points for courage. Or maybe he was just stupid. She shook her head. Backbone was admirable, though it was rather annoying at the moment. But backbone also got young, mostly-innocent soldiers killed in the Empire all the time. A real Sith would likely have choked the poor child unconscious, at the very least. She couldn’t bring herself to violate the Force’s purity for the sake of a ruse. 

Well, not in so egregious a manner, anyway. The Force could absorb a tiny bit of deception. She sighed, ordered her thoughts, and did the one thing she was hoping to avoid. 

With a casual flick of two fingers, Alaeyah spoke, nudging the young soldier’s mind with her quiet words. “You don’t need to see my identification.”

He stiffened immediately. “I don’t need to see your identification.”

One of the other soldiers on duty noticed, letting out a small grunt that his vocabulator turned into a hiss. Alaeyah turned to him, haughty and glowering.

“Speak of this to no one, soldier, or you shall have me to answer to.”

He wasn’t quite as brave as his comrade. “Y--Yes, of course, my Lord.”

The first soldier had turned away. He swiped a badge over a tiny crimson scanner set into the metal gate, and the shield faded away. 

“Have a pleasant day, My Lord.”

Aleyah gathered up her cloak and swept through, not even sparing him a glance. Soldiers weren’t so polite in Republic space. But then, Republic officers didn’t turn their subordinates over to lightning-happy Inquisitors for disrespect, so she supposed there was a trade-off.

Step one had gone mostly well. Time for step two. Alaeyah’s fear bubbled and churned in her gut, but she couldn’t let it show. A Sith wouldn’t betray fear. It was too easy to sense, and a fearful target was prey in the Empire. She squashed it down into the smallest ball she could and strode on, head high and proud, steps deliberate. The sensation was bizarre, after spending so long humbling herself, serving the good of the galaxy and the will of the Force.

***

Azzullah stalked among the twisted trees. That same nagging, vaguely irritating feeling dogged her, growing stronger as she went. Whatever it was, she was close.

Frankly, she had no idea why she’d even felt the need to come down here. It’d been quite some time since she’d first survived her rite, making her way through the predatory beasts and dangerous wetlands. Long enough that she felt somewhat wary, an emotion not becoming of a Sith. 

When she came down to it, being a Sith was often more about image than anything else. Yes, the Dark Side’s liberation from the shackles of the Jedi granted her enormous power. Her limbs and heart seethed with bottled, destructive potential. To walk as a Sith was to strut as a goddess among men. 

But when one lived in a world of powerful beings just as ruthless and dangerous as herself, survival became about who could project the stronger facade. Behind the facade came all the trickery and intrigue Azzullah had learned, reluctantly, to wield. She had a talent for it, though often not the patience. She preferred action. 

Perhaps that was her reason for being here. All the conniving and plotting got tiresome after a while. Sometimes, the best outlet was a quick, brutal confrontation; a test of strength, not of wits. Whatever was out here had touched her thoughts, made itself known. It was a challenge. Likely, some long-dead Sith ghost or another was wandering around, killing things at random. Or perhaps one of the beasts had strayed into a well of Dark Side energy. Neither one was uncommon on Dromund Kaas.

She would subdue her challenger, and it would be wonderful. Maybe then, she’d have the attention span to deal with uppity little Kalet properly. 

Azzullah rolled her neck, striding with purpose. The Dark Side responded not only to anger, but to any strong emotion. Pride, lust, hatred, even joy. She’d long since found that, for her, the Living Force reacted most powerfully to sheer willpower. To determination. She’d clawed her way from the slave pits with nothing but her mind and the Force. She’d bested acolytes with twice her training, bested Harkon, their overseer, by demanding power of herself. Through years of savage combat and even more savage cunning, she’d fought her way to the top of the Empire, carved a spot for herself amid the most dangerous beings in the galaxy. 

She _was_ the most dangerous being in the galaxy. 

Violet, cerulean, and scarlet, lightning forked through her veins, rippled across her skin. She gathered her power around her like the massive, anvil-shaped thunderheads that growled over Dromund Kaas.

And Azzullah smiled.

***

Preoccupied as she was with maintaining shields around her own fear, Alaeyah had scarcely let anything in. The Force was a constant, like a chord of music ever sustaining in the background of her thoughts. She’d become so used to it, that now, the only reason she even noticed it was in its absence.

But something pinged, insistent against her stoic walls. With careful motions, Aleayah gradually weakened her mental shields, letting her senses slip back in as she walked through the wild forest. The fear came back, too, slithering through the cracks she made, and Aleayah realized that the creeping tendrils were far, far more potent than they should have been. 

Fear, the first and easiest step along the path to the Dark Side, had long been the most difficult emotion for Alaeyah to master. The Force flowed through her, and by dipping into its waters, Aleayah was often able to conquer most any weakness of spirit. It was a balm for heartache, a reasonable voice against pride, a soothing melody for anger. 

But fear? Fear was slippery and elusive. She aligned the river of the Force any which way, and somehow, anxiety still managed to bubble up again. What if she failed to control her power? What if she stumbled? Aleayah knew the Force flowed through her in orders of magnitude greater than most Jedi. She told herself this wasn’t arrogance, but simply practicality. She’d been given a gift, and it was her duty, and her calling, to use it only as it was intended. A Jedi was a conduit through which the Force worked its will, nothing more. 

But she was terrified of what would happen should she give in to her emotions. She knew all too well what resulted. 

And so, when the fear came, she let it wash over her, grounding it out with stillness of thought. Or she tried to, anyway. Usually, fear would come, and it would pass. But whatever she felt now, it kept coming and coming. Instead of fading away, it intensified by the moment. Irrational and cold and terrible. 

There was really only one thing that filled her with so much terror.

Aleayah sighed. She stopped walking. 

Her lightsaber clunked into her hand, but she didn’t activate it. She gathered the dark cloak about herself, and in the same motion, dipped deep into that glowing well of tranquility stirring gently in her thoughts.

The fear roiled and billowed. It swept into the forest clearing with a physical weight. Aleayah clasped her hands behind her back and turned slightly away, staring off into the trees. 

The metallic, glinting tang of ozone filled her nose. The hair on her neck stood up. 

“Hello, Azzullah,” Aleayah said, without turning. The rolling cloud of fear paused, only a few feet away. “I need to talk to you.”

“I should have known,” Azzullah murmured. Aleayah could hear the snap and crackle of lightning playing across the Sith Lord’s body. 

A second sound joined, a hiss and whir. Heat climbed up over Aleayah’s shoulders, and scarlet light glittered through the raindrops. 

Only then did Alaeyah turn. In the center of the nearly-palpable pall of fear, a tall, statuesque woman stood, half her face lit blood-red by the lightsaber humming at her side, the other half hidden in shadow. Amber eyes glittered beneath black hair. The hem of a cloak the same color as the lightsaber stirred over the muddy ground. 

“Hello, sister,” Azzullah said. Arcs of lighting traced up and down her arms. “Welcome to Dromund Kaas.”


	2. Chapter 2

 Chapter 2

  ** _\-- Five Years Ago --_**

 

 “I will not fight you, Azzullah. “ Alaeyah said softly, folding her hands in front of her. “You’re my sister.”

“Of course you won’t.” Azzullah’s time in Empire space had tinted her accent. A wicked, sharp smile twitched across her lips. “That’s why doing _this_ is so much fun! _Pew!_ ”

Azzullah cocked her index finger and thumb into a little blaster pistol. Lightning cracked from her fingertip, oscillating ferociously between cyan and purple.

Alaeyah reacted in an instant, her hand snapping up to catch the bolt with her palm, redirecting it harmlessly into the rocky ceiling. It disintegrated there with a puff and a whisper of energy, leaving a charred circle in the stone.

“I see you’ve not lost his sense of humor.” Alaeyah flexed her hand, willing away the faint sting of her sister’s power.

“Don’t compare me to him,” Azzullah spat.

The words bit more deeply than the lightning had. Alaeyah tapped the cool, soothing vein in her mind, the one she pictured the Force flowing steadily through.

“Father is a good man.”

Azzullah’s sneer mutated into something more feral. Her barely-controlled power twined through the air around them. Invisible barbs lanced across Alaeyah’s face like insect bites.

“He’s scum. A criminal and an idiot”

“While I do not approve of our parents’, er, profession--” Alaeyah began.

“ _Don’t_!” Azzullah snapped. The vein in Alaeyah’s head pulsed red in warning. An instant later, a razor of electricity the size of a speeder bike arched toward her, unguided by the Sith, simply an outlet of Azzullah’s fury. Alaeyah seized the stray energy in the air around her and yanked it into a translucent blue sphere. The lightning bolt slammed into it with a roar, and the world around the Jedi flashed white as the attack hissed around the shield.

She was still blinking the red and pink afterimage out of her eyes when the blast detonated somewhere behind her. A cacophony of tumbling, broken stone echoed across the chamber from the impact.

The rumbling took a moment to cease. Alaeyah, once she had recovered her vision, held her sister’s glare. Azzullah’s eyes had been brown once, like their mother’s. The Dark Side had taken that too.

Azzullah looked away first, and only then did Alaeyah say, “That could very well have killed me.”

“Your weakness isn’t my problem. If it had, then you would have deserved it. Weakness is death. I had to learn that the hard way, didn’t I?"

“You chose your path.”

The air snarled again, laced with the tang of ozone. Purple sparks danced between Azzullah’s fingers.

“Did I?” The Sith’s voice was utterly venomous. “I chose to be a slave, then? I chose to suffer, alone, abandoned by the very family you defend?”

“We did not abandon you!” Alaeyah couldn’t will the sharp edge from her voice.

“Really?!” Azullah demanded. The ozone stench became almost choking. Several locks of her raven hair actually stood on end. “Explain then, my dearest sister, _why_ I lived as a _slave_ for three years on Korriban? Why I was left to dig up sandy bones of long dead Sith so power hungry _pigs_ in the Empire could play archeologist with them?!”

All around the stone chamber, purple streaks burned their way across the rocks. Vicious, corrupted Force sent tremors through the floor.

“Why I had to haul stones out of the ground to build a statue of some Sith bastard who lived 40,000 years ago?! You know how I escaped, Alaeyah? Would you like to?”

Jagged stone crumbled from the ceiling. Alaeyah felt the Force stabbing at the chamber, heard it cry out like a living thing as Azzullah’s will twisted it out of shape.

“I killed the whip cracking Gamorrean driving me,” Azzullah’s voice became more and more snakelike as she devolved into rage. “I pulled lightning out of sky and rammed it down his slimy throat! And then I _still_ had to fight. Overseer Harkun did everything he could to hold me back! So I left his precious protégé as a smoking corpse! Then, my master tried to kill me, and I trapped the bitch in the body of a brute I broke and bent to my will! _Mine_! ”

Alaeyah braced against the onslaught, reaching for whatever shreds of Force her sister left behind. “Azzullah, we didn’t--”

“And what were _you_ doing?!” Azzullah shrieked. “ _Meditating!_ Sitting with the Jedi Masters in the Room of a Thousand Fountains while I fought for my life! What were Mom and Daddy doing? Selling illegal droids to _Nar Shaddaa spice dealers_!” her voice cracked and snapped, and Alaeyah’s instincts screamed at her once more.

Lightning exploded from the ceiling, smashing into Alaeyah’s flimsy shield with the force of a turbolaser, shattering it and hurtling the Jedi into the air. Alaeyah threw out her hands, desperately grasping at the Force. With a few frantic motions, she managed to shape it beneath her enough to keep from breaking her skull open on the stone floor.

Instead, she tumbled into what felt like water. It slapped at her back, knocking the wind out of her, but absorbing her momentum and slowing her descent.  She sank, gasping, to the ground, and looked up to see Azzullah towering over her, amber eyes alight with fractured motes of lightning.

“Weak,” her sister growled.

There was a snap and a buzz, and Azzullah’s scarlet lightsaber winked to life near Alaeyah’s head, bathing the right side of her face in sudden heat.

“I’ve had enough of all of you. I’ve moved on. You, father, mother, Uncle Benidect; if I see any of them again, _especially_ our dear sweet mother, I’ll personally electrocute them into ash _._ You can be the first to die, Alaeyah. Congratulations. I’ll make sure they get your head.”

Alaeyah didn’t act, the Force did. She braced her hands on the ground behind her head, and the Force propelled her into a handspring. Azzullah’s saber crackled, missing her by a hair, and Alaeyah drove her feet into her sister’s stomach.

Her soft-soled boots didn’t do much damage, but Azzullah stumbled several steps away in pure shock. No time to react. The Sith let out an inarticulate shriek, and a sheet of blue-white lightning tore across Alaeyah’s field of vision as she hurtled past, blinding her again for the space of an instant. The Force set Alaeyah on her feet, and she whirled to face her sister.

Azzullah abandoned all caution, and with another horrible cry, charged her sister, lightsaber weaving a bloody arc.

The hilt of Alaeyah’s lightsaber clanked into her outstretched hand, and she flicked on her blade just in time to catch Azzullah’s ferocious blow. Scarlet met green, smashing into Alaeyah’s parry hard enough that the Jedi felt her wrist pop in its socket. The Force dripped like cool water into the joint, numbing the pain, and Alaeyah held her ground.

Azullah spluttered, choking on her own fury. “Three years….slave…bastard!”

Each word brought another blow. Alaeyah’s blade whirled and leapt in response, lithely leaping from strike to strike. The rational side of the Jedi’s brain let loose with a steady stream of terrified pleas to run, to hide from this enraged predator somewhere warm and dry and dark. The vein of her Force power muffled it, reaching into Alaeyah’s training to simultaneously ice over the acrid fear and to fuel her arms with speed and resolve.

The air around the combatants blurred with the hazy heat of the whirling lightsabers. Alaeyah’s hair stuck to her forehead; Azzullah’s stood in jagged points, little bursts of purple static flicking through the strands.

Even imbued with the Force, Alaeyah’s human body could only take so much punishment. The cool flow of power abruptly faltered and coughed, and Alaeyah’s guard broke. With a shout, Azzullah drove her blade through the weak point.

Alaeyah managed to slap it away from her heart, but a line of blistering heat lashed her right cheek. She gasped, the rational insistence of her brain won out, and she channeled the sudden eruption of fear and pain into a wordless shout.

Azzullah screamed as she was blasted away, hurling nearly twenty feet. With a ropey tendril of lightning, the Sith wove her own net, much like Alaeyah had.  It bowed and set her neatly on the ground.

Silence, save for the humming of the twins’ blades as they stared each other down.

“You’re more powerful when you’re afraid,” Azzullah hissed.

 

**\-- _Present --_**

 

“You?” Azzullah began to circle the jungle clearing like a mynock. “Dear me, I expected a beast, or perhaps a spirit. But _you_? Here? How fun. Come for a rematch, have you?”

Alaeyah held her lightsaber close, braced against her thigh, but didn’t activate it. Not yet. “Azzullah. I need your help.”

The Sith placed dainty fingers to her chest, exaggerated doleful eyes reflected the scarlet light of her blade. “Me? You must be truly desperate.”

Around and around Azzullah stalked, her lightsaber humming, wavering in the rain. Alaeyah didn’t deign to turn, but kept track of her twin through the greasy, twisted shadow she left in her wake. The Force, polluted and bent out of its purpose; just the feel of it made Alaeyah queasy.

“Don’t be obtuse,” Alaeyah said. “Of course I’m desperate; otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes...so I sense,” Azzullah mused. “How very intriguing. Do tell.”

Out in the trees something big, and probably scaly, snarled at the sky. Metal tunked, Alaeyah’s fingers drummed against her hilt.

“Would you stand still?!”

As soon as she snapped them, Alaeyah regretted the words. Azzullah’s voice went soft and silky.

“Do I make you uncomfortable, sister. Does my presence...unnerve you?”

Alaeyah cracked her neck.

“I can taste your fear…” Azzullah whispered, startlingly close behind. The heat of her lightsaber drew sweat from Alaeyah’s back. “I rather like it. It makes you so much more interesting.”

One with the Force or not, a wise woman did not let a Sith stand so close to her back. Alaeyah took a slow step forward and turned to face her sister. She matched the Sith’s smile with one of her own, one she didn’t feel.

“You tried this once before. It didn’t work then, and it will not work now.”

“It almost did,” Azzullah said, finally halting. Violet sparks gathered around her feet.

She wasn’t wrong. On Alaeyah’s cheek, a small strip of pink, burned flesh tingled with phantom pain.

“If you’re finished?” the Jedi asked, holding out her hands.

Azzullah mirrored the gesture, mocking. “By all means. Elucidate me. Then I shall decide what to do with you.”

“Only the Force can make that decision,” Alaeyah said. Her sister’s lip curled, and she had to tamp down a petty glow of satisfaction. “Like I said, I’ve come for your help.”

The silk vanished from Azzullah’s voice, replaced with acid. “What, have the monks finally booted you from their sacred sanctum? Or have they sent you to _cleanse_ me, _Barsen'thor_? Please, do try it. I’d love to see what happened.”

So, she’d heard of Alaeyah’s newish title. Her information was uncomfortably up-to-date.

“Neither,” Alaeyah said. “Actually, they don’t even know I’m here.”

This caught Azzullah’s attention. One dark eyebrow rose. Before she could speak, Alaeyah pressed on.

“I received a vision.”

“And it brought you here? I’d say the Force has given up on you, sister. Sent you to your death.”

“Perhaps.”

Azzullah’s sneer grew more pronounced. “Yes, you’d accept that wouldn’t you? You disgust me.”

Her lightsaber came up, and Alaeyah took in a breath. With it came a feeling, a whisper carried on the wind. There would be no violence. Not yet, anyway. Her sister’s curiosity currently outweighed her bloodlust.

Well, there really was a first for everything.

“Sister, what I saw...it was...dark. And not in the way you like. This was...an empty darkness. A void. The Force showed me a vision of absolutely nothing. Do you understand? _Nothing._ A world without the Force.”

There in the rain-fogged jungle, Azzullah’ lightsaber flickered. The only sound was that of tiny pops and sizzles as water struck the superheated blade.

“Perhaps you saw the underside of your own eyelids,” the Sith sniffed. But she’d paused her endless pacing, and her amber eyes held Alaeyah’s.

For all that separated them, the vast gulf in experiences and beliefs ruptured between twins, they had one thing in common.

Without the Force, what were they?

Alaeyah had tiptoed to the edge of that line of thought on more than one occasion, and she suspected her sister, the slave who lifted herself from destitution on the backs of a mountain of corpses, felt the same way.  

“Have you ever come across such a thing in your research?” Alaeyah asked.

Azzullah considered her. When last they’d met, Alaeyah had seen only wildness in her sister’s eyes, as feral and unstoppable as the lightning she wielded. Now, they were just as dangerous in its absence. Cold, as if Azzullah could mathematically determine her chances of killing the person standing in front of her.  

“Nothing of that magnitude,” Azzullah finally said. She began to pace once more, less the stalk of a calculating predator, more the mark of an active mind. “Darth Traya reportedly tried to destroy the Force, sometime after Nihilus fell. She failed...spectacularly. Nihilus himself was called the Lord of Hunger, for according to legend, he could wipe entire planets of life. But of the _Force_?” She twirled her lightsaber, absently slicing through a blackened root.

“The Jedi Council cut Revan off--”

Azzullah interrupted with a sharp gesture. “No, your merciful Jedi Council tore his memories from him. You’re thinking of Meetra Surik, who supposedly stripped _herself_ of the Force.  And it was only temporary. She _wanted_ to be cut off, and couldn’t.”

After a moment, Alaeyah said, “So you think as I do. It should be impossible.”

“One thing I’ve learned, dear sister, is that _nothing_ is impossible in the Force, if you really put your mind to it. Try Force Walking sometime. Now _that_ is a ride.” Azzullah grinned, flashing far too many teeth.

Alaeyah felt bile rise in her stomach. “You actually did that?”

“Don’t stand there and judge me. Unlike you, my life wasn’t handed to me on a silverized platter.”

“Stop,” Alaeyah held up her hands.  “This will get us nowhere. You said ‘in the Force.’ How could the Force be used against itself?”

Azzullah shrugged. “Same way we do.”

“No, we’re...opposites,” Alaeyah phrased it as delicately as she could. “Two polar ends, but the same Force. You can’t use something to destroy itself. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Hence the purpose of your visit,” Azzullah said. She stopped pacing once more. “You took an awful risk, coming here. You must be quite certain of what you saw.”

Alaeyah thought about the vision, shuddered in the utter cold of it. “I am.”

Her sister regarded her, gaze distant. “May I ask you something?”

The politeness of the request startled Alaeyah into agreement. “Of course.”

“I’d like to see your lightsaber.”

“My...my lightsaber?” Alaeyah instinctively clutched the hilt more closely. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd. I know you won’t surrender it. I only wish to see the blade.”

There it was again. The persistent, tiny shill of fear burbling through Alaeyah’s mind, disrupting her years of study, of technique. The Force flowed along with the anxiety, surging into strange patterns she neither recognized nor trusted.

Doubt.

It took Alaeyah a moment to muster her voice. “That seems unnecessary.”

Azzullah extinguished her own blade with a hiss, letting the shadows creep back through the clearing. “It’s necessary if you wish my help.”

She already knew, Alaeyah was sure. Perhaps Alaeyah really could solve this on her own, without getting her unstable, powerful twin involved. _Sith’s blood_ , when she put it that way, she wondered if she hadn’t gone mad herself; standing here, in the heart of Sith space, beside the most dangerous Force user she had ever met.

Or, perhaps she couldn’t do it alone, and all the galaxy would suffer because Alaeyah was afraid. She knew what was expected of her. 

So, before that river of doubt could bubble up any further, Alaeyah thumbed the switch on her hilt. Light spread through the clearing once more, sending the shadows scurrying away. Pure and clean, but no longer green. Not anymore.

“Purple?” Azzullah crowed. “Purple, sister, from you? Dear me, but you _have_ lost your faith.”

“I haven’t lost anything. I am simply expanding my knowledge.”

“And how does Master Yuon Par feel about this paradigm shift?”

Alaeyah shut off the blade. “She doesn't approve. But I am no longer her padawan.”

“Yes, another one of the Council’s Jedi Masters, gone purple. Perhaps you all have some sense after all. Very well, sister. I will help you. Allow me some time to gather my affairs here, and I shall meet you in neutral space.”

“Anchorhead,” Alaeyah said, eager to push the conversation elsewhere. “On Tatooine. You know it?”

“I do. Tomorrow morning, then.”

“Agreed.”

And, pact made with a monster, a war criminal… her sister, Alaeyah took her leave.


End file.
